Lost

This world is becoming uglier by the minute. Thieves, hypocrites and selfish people roam free, preying on the little people. It is scary.

 I swear to God I'll never forget the thief who stole my precious iPad. I pray that a miserable death awaits this perpetrator.  

Current Music: Maps - Maroon Five

Intermission #49

How do you, pray enlighten me, make the most out of something when you don't have much to work with from the start?

I have been accused of being judgmental, but I know not its difference from drawing an inference as a guide to deal with people.

Environment shapes people, and there is no way am I staying put when all I have around me is un-professionalism.

Intermission #48

Maybe I should just leave.

Caught in an uncivilised working place that really should have been shut down or upgraded ages ago.

Caught in a bond that is just as uncertain as ever, despite how people may say otherwise.

But they say never make any decision when all you see is red.

So what do you when you're seeing darkness in your future?

Ideally speaking, we should turn to Him. But I seem to have lost my speech to pray.

But that's okay, right? He, the Omniscient, will still Understand these tears.

Intermission #47

1. It's like everything is telling me to leave this damned hospital.

Never mind that I might not be adequately equipped in terms of knowledge, skills or clinical judgment. Never mind that I'm leaving friends behind. Never mind that I'm stepping into unfamiliar grounds.

I just feel in my heart - with great conviction! - that this is not a place for me. I can't, for the life of me, see myself developing properly if I remain in this backwater place.

It's like all departments are hostile towards each other. There is no respect, no trust.

Let's not even get me started on how ancient the infrastructure, the facilities are.

And the mindset. Oh, God, let's not even go there!

Dear God, save me, for I am powerless to save myself.

2. Now that the elections are over, can we just move on?

So BN retains the government seat. Did they really cheat? Only God Knows. But they can't afford to be complacent anymore.

All I know is, I'm sick of racial politics, regardless of which side incited it. I'm sick of opening my FB newsfeed and seeing hate and accusations, back to back.

Everybody needs "UBAH". And I mean it as change for the better, no matter what your political ideologies or worldview.

...I don't know what to believe in anymore. It's easier to give up than to constantly seek for the truth, in today's graying world, where authenticity is difficult to ascertain, despite the many sources of information available at our disposal. Such irony!

How do you seek the truth when there is slander all around, when people deal in lies, and people act more emotionally than rationally?

Is ignorance bliss? I'm starting to think so.

So please, let's just put all this conflict aside. Stop acting childish. Man up and stop being such a sore loser. Remember that the helm of governance is actually an amanah, and God will question you in the Afterlife.

...And for God's sake, clean up all the flags and banners. They're an eyesore already!

Current Music: Taking Over Me - Lawson

Madhouse

Despite our small number, the higher ups still make unreasonable demands.

It's as if they don't care. As if they're ignorant as to how we're also struggling to perform our most basic of duties, and yet they continue to pester us by making things more complicated, more convoluted than necessary.

It's bloody stupid.

Just leave us alone, damnit.

No matter how I try to push myself to go beyond my limits, there are always obstacles.

Is it fair that we the innocents must pay for the follies of the idiots in the management department, and the selfishness of those who only seek to save their own sorry a**es?

The answer came to me on a fellow friend's facebook entry on my newsfeed:

"Nasib baik ada Akhirat"

Because He is the Most Just of Judges.

...and at times I figured it's selfish to ask for life to be a breeze all the way. Because life's not a bed of roses. Especially when you realise that you have pricks in power.

Current Music: Love Story meets Viva la Vida - The Piano Guys

Intermission #45

Have you ever feel so small, so insignificant?

Have you ever felt so hurt that it feels like someone just tore your chest wide open and ripped your heart out of the praecordium, and then shred it to pieces?

Have you ever felt so betrayed by the ones you love and even by yourself?

Have you ever had so many back-to-back episodes of self-reprisals, like a barrage of machine guns taking shots at you?

And all these pain can't be drowned, can't be deleted, can't be ignored or denied.

Why do I do this to myself?

And so it goes on - this fear of attachment. Of getting hurt.

Upside Down

1. I'm astounded as to how ignorant I could be at times.

2. One reason why I chose this profession was because how I hated bureaucracy - the sense of being a "pak/mak turut" to your superiors because you're just a lowly kuli and so inexperienced and oh-so-styoopid.

Dear God, I didn't expect I could be more wrong. This is the epitome of bureaucracy.

Remember this rule?

(i) Your boss is always right.

(ii) If your boss is wrong, refer to rule number (i).

Yeah. My working environment is the perfect embodiment of this rule.

Which naturally brings us back to my point 1. Woe is me!

3. Perhaps rather than blowing your top and scolding us house officers (who are nothing but your cheap source of labour anyway), you MOs or specialists or whatnot's should just sit together and discuss among each other what each and everyone of you can request from each other, so that one department will not go and order bizarre and insane things from other departments.

It'd do a world of good rather than sitting together and complaining about us HOs. At least you'd probably understand each other better instead of condemning other departments for their so-called inefficiency or joblessness or whatever rubbish you can think of. Unless your egos are just too big to listen to other people.

What use is there in yakking at me when I'm only following orders?

And for the love of God don't bother asking me questions when you don't give me a chance to answer or give proper reasons.

And if you're just too high and mighty to entertain us HOs, then go yak at my superiors instead!

Honestly though. It feels as if all the higher ups do is complain about us rather than changing the hospital system or manner of management.

They're doing it wrong. But who are we to tell them that, hmm?

4. Don't think just because we're HOs, we have no idea what we're doing.

Oh wait, I forgot. We're your punching bag, your scapegoat, your black sheep. Getting scolded at for no good reason is apparently part of our job description.

...Pshaw! Is this what you call professionalism? Is there a need to make other people's lives more difficult than necessary?

5. I'm becoming less enthusiastic to join Pathology with each passing minute. Damn it.

6. God, when will this suffering end!?

I just hope I will not become like those that I now hate. Difficult, certainly, what with my own temper becoming more and more uncontrollable by the minute...

Current Music: Drive By - Train

Intermission #40

1. Getting real tired of all this crap, of this emotional roller coaster, and the unnecessary sources of stress.

I don't understand how some people can find even the smallest mistakes to point fingers at us lowly HOs.

How is it that people can find so much entertainment, so much sadistic joy in demeaning us the little people? Have they forgotten that they were once like us?

Or do they automatically judge us as incompetent just because we now subscribe to the shift system as opposed to their much demanding oncall system?

For all you know some of us lowly house officers are actually better than how they used to be back in those days in some aspects.

Of course there are those that are problematic, but what about the rest of us who work for real? Do all our hard work and energy go unnoticed?

Honestly, I don't enjoy my work anymore.

2. I can feel the distance growing between us, you who have risen above and I, still stuck in this gutter.

You who are having the time of your life, and I, struggling to find the small beacon of joy amidst all this despair.

You who have all the time on your hands, and I, always behind.

You who are in a crowd, while I, left deserted.

So forgive me for my inability to share your laughter, and - perhaps? - I shall forgive you for forsaking me.

Current Music: Hall of Fame - The Script featuring will.i.am

The Long and the Short of It

I'm making quite a name for myself as a no-nonsense, perpetually pissed off (senior) HO.

My scolding patients is not a new sight these days.

After 1 year in the system, I am already so severely disillusioned.

Is it that bad? Perhaps I exaggerate at times, but perhaps very few would argue with me if I say that the absurdities that this sorry excuse for a hospital dishes out to us house officers beats HTAA by a long, long shot.

Lab rules and protocols are moronic that I'm utterly embarrassed to adhere to their stupid system.

Patients boleh tahan jugak banyak cekadak diorang.

So called protocols and procedures retard our work.

Stupid CMEs are mostly a waste of time, when presenters obviously didn't put in much of an effort.

And for God's sake please stop calling me "Kak" already; I'm an effing doctor for crying out loud, stop telling me to change your IV drip!

And 2 years of HO-ship is too bloody long. Would I say that I'm learning? Hardly - most of my present knowledge I carried from my years as a medical student.

Four months of one posting is too long. What are we, cheap sources of labour!? Will all these insane levels of stress and overwhelming workload and lack of appreciation be worth it in the end?

I realise that the despair and disappointment in the general quality of HOs are not entirely fictional, but even so all this brouhaha is shedding light on an entirely wrong perspective. Even I occasionally facepalm at certain peers of mine, that at times I want nothing more than to fling my shoe in their direction.

I maintain that the higher ups should also share the blame, instead of making us the scapegoats just because we're the lowest in the hierarchy.

The working conditions could use a great deal of improvement. But what to do, the hospital is in poverty anyway.

The hospital is in near-shambles. The elevators are too damn slow, they give no meaning to "stat" anymore. As if the stupid procedures to enter the lab itself is not slowing things enough...

And don't even get me started on how stupid all this code asking business just to ask for blood.

I'm frankly surprised that the mortality rate of this hospital isn't any higher.

Screw everything, I'm outta here as soon as I can if I can help it.

Current Music: How to Go - School Food Punishment

Defeated

1. I want to give up.

It's like I can't say or do anything without being judged, and my intentions being misunderstood.

Am I speaking in some alien language, and are my thoughts so out of this world?

Am I so insignificant that I can be trampled to the ground just like that?

Why does everything seem foreign to me all of a sudden?

I condemn myself enough, there is no need for anyone to share that luxury anymore. Especially when they know nothing.

...If only I could give up without compromising anything.

2. It's all a matter of time, is it not?

They say good things come to those who wait.

Others say that time and tide wait for no man.

Which principle should I subscribe to, pray tell?

Only time will tell.

...This is going nowhere, honestly. Dear God.

Current Music: Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People

Temperamental

...I blame the hormones. And myself too, I guess. Because we have always been taught not to blame others, and nobody likes to be blamed for others' problems.

I know I'd feel that way. And I also know for a fact - here I sort of blame my ego, but whatever - that I absolutely hate it when people contradict me.

Maybe it's because I spend an insane amount of time cogitating, weighing options, coming up with conclusions, rewinding scenarios in my already messed up brain. And so when it struck me that people tend to jump to conclusions only after analysing a small slice of my life, my behaviours, I get irritated...and I snap.

The rebel within me awoke today...though not exactly in front of the right people.

Maybe I've been far too lenient all my life. In which I allowed people to make decisions despite the fact that I'm the one who will be suffering the consequences. I allowed people push me around. I allowed them to nag me even when all I want is for them to just drop the effing issue. I stayed around to get an earful of their lectures even when I know very well that they are just working on assumptions.

Perhaps my Surgical posting has made me extra impatient, in that I can tune out whatever I refuse to hear up until a certain point before I actually burst, instead of letting it go.

I don't even want to have opinions anymore. What good is there, when what I say, what I do, who I am don't matter in the least?

Current Music: Fix You - Coldplay

Breaking Point

I can feel it. Something breaking in me - whether it is the last bit of my patience, my humanity, or my sanity, I have no idea.

Dear God, I'm surrounded by laziness and incompetence and inefficiency and utter nonsense. Not to say that I'm the best and the most capable person in the ward (or the department, but whatever), but at least I take my job seriously and think of people!

I can't function like this.

So much hate. So much despair...so much regret.

The only thing heavier than my footsteps to work, is the despair burdening my bosom.

Fortunately enough, rare though as they may be, there are those occasions that I could share some laughter, a jovial chat and the promise of some gastronomic indulgence. Though I do wish, every so often, for this distance from home to just disappear, because there are times that one just need the friendly reassurance that it's not just one person - you - against this mad, mad world.

Not forgetting, a certain smile that could light up my dark and grievous world, an infectious laughter, and a bundle of memories that could bring this...pleasant sense of gastritis (that possibly no proton pump inhibitor could ever resolve).

And this prayer that I extend to Him the Almighty.

They are the small beacon of hope - possible the only factors that still enables me to go on...but how further and how long more?

Current Music: Domino - Jessie J.

P/s: Karniza, dude, you are right...It seems like lately all I am capable of putting down into words is depressing. Shall I refer myself to a psychiatrist?

An Ending is Just A Beginning of Something Else

*If you are looking for happy stuff, please cease reading at once and look elsewhere. If you are looking for a glimpse of the darkness that has consumed me at the moment, then so be it; My advice, carry on with caution.

Done with 2 weeks of tagging in the Surgical Department, and honestly, I dislike it immensely.

Somehow the hospital always manages to throw one surprise after another - and not in a good way, I assure you. Just when I thought that the Paeds nursery actually runs on havoc alone, along comes 4-2 and somehow, suddenly nothing actually makes sense.

The passover system is stupid, hands down. We are not nurses, and honestly, we are burdened with enough unnecessary tasks as it is. And the rounds take too much time, leaving us with little time to get things done before the next rounds begin.

And it's horribly ridiculous when you have more MOs than HOs doing the rounds. At one point I just wanted to purse my lips and just do what we HOs essentially are - secretaries.

We are understaffed. How can we complete any of the ward work when we are expected to go for OT (one person for elective, one person for emergency operations), daycare, scope room, and the radiology department to go begging for urgent scans? 

Also, the schedule is crazy. There is no making sense when all you have in your hands and around you is insanity.

In whatever establishment, there needs to be a system. No matter how many times I have emphasised the fact that I thrive on entropy in the past, it no longer applies when there are just too many people in the picture. Hence there needs a good teamwork, a good sense of responsibility, a mutual feeling of "I've got your back".

Here, it's like people's negative qualities manifest only too easily. Everyone is too busy saving their own skin. We're too busy passing over things that the ward work is compromised.

I like to think that I'm not as negative as people make me out to be, so imagine my rage when I was accused of being too judgmental over people instead of trying to be more positive about the whole situation.

I frankly am quite tired of trying to look for a positive aspect when it's greatly overshadowed by the negative and the insanity.

And tomorrow...honestly, I'm scared to face tomorrow.

Can't today stay instead? Because today, after one week of torture...I savoured joy.

Current Music: Rolling in the Deep - Adele

Nil

I have nothing to say.

Words fail me when things are swiveling away out of my grasp, just as reality seems so threatening that my imagination is on the verge of rejecting it in favour of an idealistic, rose-tainted world. When the surrounding entropy is too much even for me to handle. When I'm surrounded by morons who refuse to see reason, and refuse any cooperation just so we can increase our efficiency.

This is one of those times that I feel utterly embarrassed for my race.

A friend of mine would counter all my negative thoughts, insisting that I have what he called a "positive charisma" - whatever that is supposed to mean.

I still have yet to learn, that this fleeting world is insignificant, immaterial compared to the everlasting life in the Hereafter. This world is too trivial to be wasted by being in constant sadness.

...What does it say of me, as a Believer?

Current Music: Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People

Tough

They say tough times don't last, but tough people do.

I say, life gets tougher because it assumes you do too.

What do you do when everything falls apart, and you know that you're next in the line of fire?

What do you do when you know everything out there is screwing you up - some slowly and bit by bit, while others just knock you down even when your hands are up in the air in surrender - but you're just too powerless, too insignificant to actually bring about any wind of change?

What do you do when you can see how things are just so very wrong, but you cannot help but be enslaved by it because that's how just the effing system is and how some aspects in your environment is just so uncivilised that you start to lose hope in humanity itself?

What do you do when you're just so bloody tired of all this nonsense and you feel the urge to just scream out and somehow outdo all the babies' cries?

Would you run, even just for a little while, to escape all the stupidity that seems too eager to consume you in its tide?

I have lost my compassion...and I know it'll be tough regaining it.

I bloody hate the hospital.

"Then don't feel, just do!"

So I was told. But it just robs me of whatever joy I had left. Like a low-paid worker who does the same darn thing over and over again, with little to no room to improve him or herself.

And suppressing all this negative energy? It only delays the pain, as the comeback shows that it is capable of becoming even badder and more intimidating...and more crippling.

What is left to feel when you're too scared to feel joy and happiness, but too scared to feel pain and sorrow?

What do you do when your anger is so close to exploding, and yet there is no safe outlet anywhere?

What do you say when you have nobody to listen to your wails and bitter cries?

What do you do when you know the only thing you can do is to withdraw from people, and yet you're scared to be left alone with nothing but your gloomy and fearful thoughts?

What do you think about when your own thread of thoughts are full of disjointed things, as if there is a checkpoint in your head somewhere - perhaps your last glimmer of sanity? - that acts to cease those horrible monsters residing in your head before they take over and shut you down?

Monsters in my head. They're like parasites that suck whatever is left of me, and I am too weak to put up a fight.

What do you do when you look up to the Heavens and pray hard, but words just failed you and you just freeze there, knowing that despite the incoherence that punctuates your speech, God Knows what is it that you yearn to tell Him?
And so, these tears. And yet, with their release, my pain is not decreasing in the least.

I ask thee - what do you do when you have too many questions but the answers are nowhere in sight?

Rhetorical questions can be hard to answer, are they not?

Current Music: Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People

When They Cry

Dear God, the fabric of time slips easily and quickly through my fingers as if it were silk.

Not to say that everything has been smooth sailing so far. I've had 3 days of tagging in nursery already, but truth be told I haven't learnt anything much. I've yet to clerk any case because I was too busy running to the lab to trace things several times in a day.

There are times that you just throw everything to the wind and just go "Wtf". This is one of them.

Honestly though, it's difficult when there is a discrepancy in terms of time. The higher-ups want everything stat, but the lab processing and PPK takes time. Oh, heck, even cultures need time to grow so what is the rationale for tracing them every single day!?

I really hate the nursery.

The babies cry, sometimes alone, most of the times in unison as if in an orchestra. A badly conducted one, the kind that makes you want to cry as well.

My eyes hurt from the phototherapy lights, I'm worried that my migraine might kick in on a nightly basis.

And my hand hurts from writing so much. I'm humiliated by the state of my handwriting now.

The worse is yet to come, and yet I can't even handle this!?

I foresee the need for a shoulder to cry on, but everybody has his or her own life to live and I...I have my own. I have no one but God...which should be enough.

Theoretically.

...I have much to learn.

I kind of hate my job already, truth be told.

Current Music: How to Go - school food punishment

Frustration Knows My Name

This has proven to be too much.

I don't know why I'm so stressed out. Still trying to figure out the answer to that, and yet…in the process I unearth so many possible answers that, in the end, results in more depression and stress.

I'm not even sure if I can do this any longer. The dirty works of clerking cases (Answer my simple questions, don't take me round and round…I've no time and no patience), taking blood, filling up stupid notification forms (damn paperworks, I didn't sign up for secretarial work!), and parents who can't leave us alone (for the last time, stop asking me the things that the nurses are in charge of!), re-inserting branulas in kids who are prone to have them dislodged (it's unwise for me to do it in kids in whom I have had bad history/impression) and for God's sake stop crying already!

Difficult parents are another issue…which probably merit an entry of their own. But honestly, come on…if you want first class treatment, go to private!

There has to be a more efficient way to do things. It feels like we've been doing repetitive work, and it's not like re-writing those damn things actually give us better understanding of the patient. I mean, hello? After three, four patients who presented with the same complaints of fever, cough and runny nose…I've given up hope in trying  to remember! And people at the emergency department, please do us a huge favor and stop admitting cases that need no admissions in the first place! Do you know how much work it costs us, and how many discharge summaries are still pending!? And why must tracing lab results be such a hassle?

In any case…sure, it's easy for patients or their relatives to insist on their rights to be seen as "people with feelings". Shouldn't we, medical practitioners, be viewed the same way, seeing that we're also people with feelings? Or can it be said that just because "it's our job", it automatically negates us of our own rights to be respected and some space to actually get our job done?!

In summary, I'm still hating Paediatrics.

I don't know how much longer I can survive this. I mean, Surgical's going to be worse…and what chance do I have, when I can't even keep up right now?

…Or maybe I just hate the hospital. Yeah.

Current Music: Fix You - Coldplay

Intermission #32

I can't take it anymore.

There has to be a limit to what kind of stupidity that the superiors are putting us into. If you want things to be done, how's about stop introducing stupid rules that restrict us in our job?

The breaking point is so near, it's like something is breaking in my chest, and I'm suffocating. Overwhelmed by all this rubbish that I'm in - against my own will, and yet still too powerless to do anything about this.

I'm starting to forget what happiness feels like. One thing for sure - even during my convocation I felt numb, apathetic.

Current Music: Awaken - Maher Zain

H.O., oh H.O. ...

1. …or, other things that are part of the job description of a house officer that you were never really told about before you jumped headfirst into it:
- glorified secretary
- scapegoat
- sacrificial lamb
- punching bag
- puppet
- labourer
- pinata

Where is the glory, you ask? I'm still searching for the light, but it seems to be getting dimmer by the moment...

2. At certain times, it feels like even my body is against me.

That feeling of uselessness leaves an empty vortex, and it sucks whatever iota of hope that tried to stubbornly shine through. The seething anger towards others shakes every inch of my being. That anger towards self claws violently at something in my chest - My heart? My conscience? My soul - while all the stress gnaws at my stomach.

And somehow it's like the body is trying to purge me of all this toxic things by inducing nausea. There is the danger of rejecting food, and even sweet chocolate tastes bitter in my mouth.

My thoughts roam too far and too near for comfort. Colourful words that would make even sailors blush, and dark, dangerous imagination run wild without restraint. My dreams are bleak, and I wake up feeling more drained.

I'm afraid of going to sleep. There is no logic, no self-control to keep things in check, and I'm afraid if the nightmares will swallow me whole...and I never wake up.

Intermission #30

...If there is one thing that I absolutely cannot stand, it is people being uncivilised.

Since when is it cool to hit on random people? Especially when an example of said random person happens to be one stressed out, recently started houseman who was stuck doing discharge summaries as if she's actually a clerk and relatives nagging on when the deuce can their son/brother/etc get out of the ward?

It impedes on my professional front, which means that there is a real danger of my spite making itself known to the whole wide world.

So maybe I'm actually pissed off at something else or maybe even with myself, but whatever, and I'm starting to lose it, bit by bit.

Makes one wonder how long it'll take before I actually snap, yes?


...So maybe I'm actually pissed off because it's not the person I'd like to who's actually doing the wooing. Damn it, self, what the deuce is wrong with you!?

...Pardon the colourful language. It's the stress talking, I assure you.